Next gen entrepreneurs join Pitch Fest at Fishburners

To celebrate Youth Week, Australia’s largest startup community, Fishburner, is coming together with Job Getter and Test-ED to hold an ‘Apprentice Pitch Fest in Sydney on April 12.

The Pitch Fest will see over 50 high school students from all over NSW attend a pitch festival with Fishburners’ startups and representatives from industries that need young people.

However, unlike a traditional pitch event, the startups will be pitching themselves to the students.

Fishburners say the aim is for startups and young people to connect and for students to consider alternative paths to go where they may want to go, that could actually be smarter, more fulfilling, cheaper and more engaging than traditional pathways.

There is already an impressive array of young founders amongst the Fisburners ecosystem including serial entrepreneur Cooper Weldon, founder of Tees by Cooper and Zeit.

“I had always been a bit of an entrepreneur growing up, buying and selling budgies and guinea pigs to local pet shops. At 13 I started my own clothing line, Tees by Cooper that sold fashionable ethically made clothing, without the use of slavery (yes it does still exist in some countries), the business went international and was worn by the likes of YouTube stars Jess and Gabriel Conte and globally renown band Busby Marou,” says Weldon.

Weidon says his clothing business was his first loved and helped shape him as the entrepreneur he is today. Earlier this year he founded his second startup. Zeit Billing an alternive payment platform.

“At the start of the year I discovered a unique problem being that current payments systems were slow and inefficient, so much so that we spend 5 years of our lives waiting in lines. From this problem Zeit Billing was born, Zeit is a zero-touch payment system that allows service-based businesses to make payments easy, efficient and more seamless. This allows businesses to focus on the areas of their business that matter,” says Weidon.

Weldon is just one of a growing list of young entrepreneurs making use of the Fishburners space. With the recent launch of Virtual Memberships, Fishburners is hoping to reach even more young people and those who can’t always easily access co-working spaces.

Fishburners’ Apprentice Pitch Fest will kick off at 530pm on Friday April 12.